Is this Sidharth-Katrina romance worth a ‘Baar Baar Dekho?’

From the opening song and credits, Baar Baar Dekho looks like the stuff perfect love stories are made of. Sweet, syrupy, straight out of a novel. Jai (Sidharth Malhotra) and Diya (Katrina Kaif) have been ‘in love’ before they even knew or understood what love meant. And like any regular couple, they are set to take their relationship to the next level. Marriage. Only, the commitment-phobic and career-obsessed Jai now finds himself in a mental conflict. He didn’t see this coming. Or at least, not in the near future.

What follows is the story of Jai traveling back and forth in time seeing how his life would turn out or wouldn’t if he did things differently. Now the concept of time travel sounds exciting and is pretty much foreign to Hindi films. Baar Baar Dekhoexplores the idea and starts off pretty neat. But somewhere in the second half, the idea loses its novelty, with Jai consistently confused about his existence, his whereabouts. It wears you out then, with the film seeming to move on a repeat mode.

Diya, meanwhile, is consistently gutted about Jai’s cloddish, clumsy ways (childhood friends, weren’t they? I thought she’d know him better than that). But for a change, I saw some expression, if only singular, on Kaif’s otherwise poker face. But her Hindi, unfailingly, kept coming in the way. Sidharth (who is sinfully and droolworthy good looking, if I haven’t said it enough in my previous posts) may not be the most apt choice to play a no-nonsense, geeky, mathematician but manages to deliver with whatever he was given. Most times, his expressions are more than enough to do the talking. He still seems to be trying hard in the more serious scenes, though. It doesn’t come naturally to him. But he’ll get there.

The film preachingly hammers on love, life and relationships with lines like ‘balance ke bagair koi equation perfect nahi hoti.’

There could have been so many other ways of exploring the idea of being in a relationship for the ‘right reasons.’ Plus it takes tad bit long for our protagonist to figure this one out. The film could’ve have been wound up faster.